Winging it

As governor of Brixton prison, Paul McDowell deals with a diverse set of daily challenges. Erwin James spent a day at his side - and found out what it takes to keep one of Britain's busiest jails running smoothly

It is a typical start to the day, says Paul McDowell, governor of Brixton prison, as he trawls through his emails, "except this morning I was on tea-making duty when I got up as my wife is sick in bed". McDowell has worked for the prison service for 18 years. His first four years were spent on the landings as an officer. "I joined because I needed a job," he says. "I had a mortgage to pay and children to feed." After discovering that he enjoyed the work, and was good at it, he was recommended for and accepted on a fast-track promotion scheme, since when his career has developed from modest governor grade (middle manager) to grade-A governor - and the kids have grown up and left home.

He travels from his house in Cheam, Surrey, to the south London jail, usually arriving by 7.30am. Once in his office, a cramped and sparsely furnished room with a makeshift feel, he checks the memos on his desk then makes a few calls. "Fifty-seven this morning, that's about usual," he says. An unusual thing about this day is that I am following him around, trying to get a flavour of what running a prison entails for the man in charge.

Brixton prison is one of the capital's busiest, taking in an average of 50 prisoners a day from courts and police stations around London, and each morning discharging around the same number. It is overcrowded and under-resourced. Prisoners are mostly doubled up in cells designed for one. Some have toilets they can use out of sight of cellmates, but most do not. Infrastructure aside, Brixton's grim Victorian era exterior and cavernous wings have remained largely unchanged since the last major expansions, in the late-19th century. Yet the prison's senior management still promotes the philosophy that those within its confines should be treated as humanely as practicalities allow, a philosophy that appears in the main to have been embraced by the uniformed staff.

Attendance

The daily staff briefing begins just before 9am. The agenda starts with prisoner attendance in the education department. Though more than a hundred names appear on the morning and afternoon lists, fewer than a third of those turn up.

Another issue is the timing of exercise periods. Three wings report late starts and McDowell wants to know why. "Fine, I hear that," he says when told, "but nothing should interfere with the planned agreed times." One wing started exercise early. "That's good," he says, "but we have to keep driving to get them all on time and get this core day working." McDowell recognises that getting a regime to run on time is the best way of alleviating the frustration that builds up in a prison. Incidents reported from the previous day include a prisoner being taken seriously ill and rushed to an outside hospital; an officer being assaulted by a prisoner; and a prisoner-on-prisoner assault which resulted in hospitalisation, "but no police intervention at the assaulted man's insistence".

Back in his office I tell him I was impressed to hear in the briefing that only one member of staff is off sick. "Oh no," he says, "that's a fresh absence, which brings the total today to 16 off sick." Given that it takes at least nine staff to unlock a wing, I get a reality check of what staff shortages mean. The full staff complement at Brixton is over 400, spread over the various shift patterns. "How overcrowded is Brixton?" I ask him. "Well we are overcrowded like every other prison in the country," he says. "But what we talk about now is operational capacity. My figure is 798 and I'm always there. Prisoners may be in courts or police cells, but we are never told to take a 799th. It never happens. I promise you."

Throughout our conversation visitors knock at his open door. His new deputy governor is trying to sort out "family friendly" weekend shifts for a colleague, and a couple of managers arrive to discuss plans for "away days" for principal officers and senior officers before the next fully announced inspection by the prisons inspectorate. "This is a way of getting us to operate at our best as a matter of course," he explains. "I want the staff to be feeling proud of what they are achieving here long before the inspectors arrive." Mini meetings take place in his office every 20 minutes or so. Heads of department arrive to discuss budgets and regime changes.

"The biggest obstacle here, of course," McDowell explains as we leave his office for a walkabout, "is the old buildings and not enough activity space." One old building houses the soon-to-be-replaced kitchen. On entering, McDowell stops to chat to the officer in charge. All around us prisoners in whites are emptying pots, washing vats and loading trolleys. For a food preparation area it is clean but rough, but I'm most impressed by the tray of "healthy option" tuna salads in plastic bowls. "How much do you get to feed each prisoner?" I ask the officer. "£1.60 a day," he says casually.

Strolling through the yards once again, McDowell acknowledges the uniformed staff we pass. All get a nod and a greeting, sometimes a brief conversation. The smell of fresh paint pleasantly overrides the ubiquitous body odour. "It's like the Forth bridge," says McDowell, explaining that every day a work party of prisoners paints over the graffiti in the holding cells and corridors. One reason for his walks around the prison is to acknowledge the work going on.

Outside again, we detour to the tiny staff mess. Lunch for McDowell is a ham sandwich, which he eats between more mini-meetings and stints of email answering. So no lunch break. And no tea breaks, although later we are offered tea and coffee at the Queensland meeting, a monthly event named by an Australian prisoner, at which prisoner reps face the governor and heads of departments to raise issues concerning life on the landings.

Last month there was a mini-riot on one of the wings when two gangs fell out over drugs and mobile phones (a number of officers injured during the incident have been recommended for commendations by McDowell). Despite this, there do not appear to be too many serious problems. Unlock for "freeflow" (the four 15-minute periods when prisoners move to their places of activity) is often late, which disrupts the core day. There are problems with the system for buying things from outside the prison. It can take weeks between putting in an order to receiving a reply that the item is out of stock. "A few people were upset that no hot cross buns were given out at Easter," says one rep. "And we can't get any brown sauce from the canteen," says another. Small matters to the outsider, but not when they become the main focus of a disengaged mind.

Rapturous welcome

The final meeting I sit in on is about the guitars donated to the prison by the the musician Billy Bragg's charity Jail Guitar Doors. The officer who is going to run the new music group wants to know when it can start. "As soon as you like," says McDowell. Last month, the rock band Alabama 3 received a rapturous welcome when it played at the prison. McDowell is big on music. "It's not just about entertaining prisoners and staff though," he says. "It's about getting across that anti-racist, anti-discrimination message."

It is past 6pm when the meeting is over and I decide to leave him to his emails. He has another hour to go, at least, he tells me as we walk to the main gate. "The big challenge at Brixton," he says as we part, "is to create an environment where people are respected and are treated decently and - despite the difficulty of the job that we have to do and the position the prisoners find themselves in - we're trying to make the experience as positive as it can be."